Pelosi, Schumer ask Ryan to remove Nunes as House Intel chair over memo

by KELLAN HOWELL, CIRCA NEWS

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, March 24, 2017. Nunes said Friday that Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman for President Donald Trump, volunteered to be interviewed by committee members. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

WASHINGTON, D.C. (CIRCA NEWS) - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) have asked House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) to remove Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) as chairman of the powerful House Intelligence Committee over a controversial memo Nunes wrote that could soon be released to the public.

"The decision of Chairman Nunes and House Republicans to release a bogus memo has taken the GOP's cover-up campaign to a new, completely unacceptable extreme," Pelosi said in a letter to Ryan on Thursday.

“Both the DOJ and the FBI oppose releasing the Nunes memo…This action is not only dangerous, it is illegitimate, and violates House rules," she said, adding that Nunes' "deliberately dishonest" actions render him unfit to serve as chairman.

The controversial memo alleges serious abuse of power by the FBI during its investigation into the President Trump's 2016 campaign's ties to Russia.

In his letter to Ryan, Schumer included a list of questions ranging from the FBI and Justice Department objections to the memo to whether Ryan's staff was involved in drafting the document.

On Wednesday, the FBI released a statement blasting the memo, claiming the document was misleading and was based on cherry-picked intelligence that left out important facts for context.

"Quite simply, under your leadership, dangerous partisanship among many House Republicans seems to have taken precedent over the oath we all take to protect our nation," Schumer wrote.

The House Intelligence Committee voted Monday to release the memo to the public. The vote kicks things to Trump, who now has until Saturday to decide whether or not to release the memo.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, sent a letter to Nunes Wednesday night accusing him of making changes to the memo before it was submitted to the White House for review.

CNN reported that a spokesman for Nunes responded to Schiff's letter by calling it an "increasingly strange attempt to thwart publication of the memo.

Nunes' spokesman added that the changes that were made were "minor edits to the memo, including grammatical fixes and two edits requested by the FBI and by the Minority themselves."